


Lucky Day

by Albion19



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Alternative First Meeting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 19:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11493675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albion19/pseuds/Albion19
Summary: It's St Patrick's Day, Mad Sweeney's most hated day of the year but also his luckiest. Tasked to watch Laura Moon, and ultimately sacrifice her, he comes upon her at a bar...





	Lucky Day

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for choking and weirdness.

Lights flash from the windows, spilling onto the dark lot. A sickly green. Everything was green on this godforsaken day, even the fucking beer.

Sweeney sits behind the steering wheel and grimaces as a gaggle of people dressed in green top hats weave into the bar. _Jump Around_ by House of Pain, a staple on such a day, pumps from the open doorway and he can see a sea of eejits jumping up and down. Someone’s hat falls off and lands in a puddle as the door closes.

“Fuck’s sake…” he huffs, knuckles white before exiting his car. This was a way to get back at him for taking so long on his mission and the sign of two carrion birds hoping from a street lamp tell him enough. He gives them the finger as they caw loudly. The light under the birds suddenly explodes and they take flight with indignant squawks. Sweeney laughs, a few singed feather fluttering in the wind. As much as he hates St Patrick’s Day it did have one and only one positive.

He is never as powerful as on March 17th.

If he’s lucky he might meet the 18th without blood on his hands.

*

Men in fake red beards and _Kiss me I’m Irish_ shirts crowd the bar, the sound of laughter and chatter drowned out by music. The Wife, Gobshite and _his_ wife are ordering drinks. The blonde is talking animatedly to Gobshite but he’s trying to talk to the tiny woman Sweeney has been charged to watch.

Laura Moon of Eagle Point, Indiana. She smiles briefly at her best friend's husband and looks aside to suck vodka and orange through a straw. For a moment there is nothing behind her eyes, just a reflection of bar lights. She cocks her head, hair curling over her shoulder, as if she does not hear the infernal music playing. He imagines that she hears nothing, absolutely nothing. The Wife is half way dead already so why is he finding it so hard to give her that extra push? She means nothing to him and yet the longer he leaves it…

“You know what it means?” Audrey asks her husband, who looks away from Laura. Audrey taps at a badge on the counter. _Luck of the Irish._ With a four leafed clover, of course.

“No but it must be a fucking joke. The Irish are unlucky bastards.”

“Oh they weren’t once,” Audrey wags her finger and Sweeney thinks the Wife is half listening. “During the Gold Rush in California in eighteen whenever there were a lot of Irish immigrants. They would get really lucky finding gold. That’s where the saying comes from,” she smiles in drunken accomplishment but her husband is not listening.

Sweeney thinks back to the Gold Rush of 1849 and smiles. It’s not a mystery to him why a lot of Irish folk found gold, not when they had the good sense to leave out nuggets for him along with their bread. Mind back centuries he mishears what they say.

“That’s gotta be fake,” Gobshite slurs and Sweeney realises he’s talking about him. He turns away and sips a rum and coke.

“The beard?” his wife says and then looks at Sweeney. “God he’s tall…” she stares, a little dazed for moment before whispering to Laura. “How big you think?”

Gobshite snorts. “Please. It’s a statistic that tall men have pinky dicks,” he wags his little finger and Audrey laughs. Sweeney, pretending not to hear, eyes Laura. She has not looked at him, just staring unfocused at the dancers. Her fella is in prison and that is where her mind is.

“…Robbie, that’s not true,” Laura says suddenly. “Most big men have big dicks but if it makes you feel better to think otherwise…” she smirks at him and slips off her stool, heading towards the otherside of the room.

“I…I don’t need to feel better about anything sweetheart,” he splutters, watching her go and trying to hide his discomfort and doubt. The Wife is fucking Gobshite on the side for the last few months, why Sweeney cannot fathom. A lapse in sanity or some form of self-punishment. The Leprechaun leaves his drink and slowly follows Laura as she enters a busy restroom.

Grimnir, for some reason, needs a sacrifice and Laura Moon is it. If he does this, if he proves himself capable, then he will have a seat at the table with gods of old and an honourable death to make this sacrifice worthy.

He can be remembered as a king again.

*

She used to hate this day, all the Irish shit and drunken idiots attempting terrible accents. She hated that she had to share this day, hated that it overshadowed another year of her life passing.

Now she watches her birthday pass with the same indifference as everyone else. For a time, with Shadow, she had liked it because they had made it _small_ and the opposite of green but even that had lost its shine. Audrey remembers, of course, they had grown up together, but she knows her well enough not to go full blown _Audrey_ over it anymore.

She looks in the mirror, staring at the earrings her best friend had given her. “…You’re a terrible fucking person. Some hell bitch from hell. You deserve to have these earrings cut your neck and then bleed out in this sink,” she looks at her eyes, tries to muster the shame and squirming guilt she once felt but there’s…nothing. She sighs, watching girls heading out of the restroom when the lights suddenly flare and then die. Darkness settles. The music stops but at first she does not notice, the ringing in her ears deafening.

Girls gasp and mutter, asking questions before running into the bar. Laura can see the room behind is dark too, people staring around in confusion but then the bathroom door closes and she is alone in pitch darkness. There are no windows, no cracks for any light to spill through. She breathes, gripping the sink and stares at the mirror but there is nothing to see. She is not there. She leans forward and breathes against the surface and feels warm air blowing back at her. She inhales and holds her breath. Her heart thuds against her rib cage, her ears still ringing. Her head, already woozy from vodka, spins. She closes her eyes and the darkness behind her lids is the same. Her lungs burn, her fingernails scrapping against the porcelain of the sink.

In the quiet rumble of people leaving the bar someone else breathes behind her.

 _Someone in a cubicle_ , she thinks but does not move or speak. The breathing is directly behind her, deep breaths. A man. Her heart pounds as she opens her eyes. She sees a darker shadow reflected in the mirror, a hulking figure towering over her. Her first thought is Robbie but he would have broken the silence with some douchy comment by now, his fingers already going for her cunt. The stranger inhales again, a shallow sound and moves closer.

He brushes up against her bareback, the denim of his jacket soft, his belt cold. She shudders as his body presses against her and all the oxygen escapes her throat. She sucks in dark dank air, her body throbbing with blood and adrenaline. She thinks about screaming for help, thinks about fighting but does neither of those things. 

Hips pressed into the sink, her sex pulsing rapidly at the contact, they breathe heavily together until one of his hands reaches up and wraps around her throat. He is so large he makes a ring around her neck. She grabs at his hands, feels the rings he wears. Fear spikes through her, sharp and lacerating. He could snap her apart, he could squeeze the life out of her and leave her crumpled like a dead leaf on the ground of this shitty bar. A birthday no one would forget. A part of her, a part that is always floating in a dark toxic tub, wants him to and she leans her head back, eyes rolling until she is almost kneading his chest. She could dissolve into him.

He breathes for her, great gasping inhales that almost sound like sobs. At the relaxing of her body against his, her hands falling from his hands to grip his sides, he makes a growling noise and suddenly pushes her forward. Laura grabs the sink again, bent over it and takes in her second gasping breath that night. He shoves against her hips and then he’s off her.

“…You’re fucking cracked…Christ Almighty,” the man says and she thinks it’s a good attempt at an Irish accent and she has heard many that night. She leans up against the sink and turns.

“If…If I see you…again…” she manages to strangle out and then falls silent. She’ll call the cops? Beat the crap out of the giant? Thank him? She doesn't even know what he looks like. She moves forward, hands outreached but she trips and falls on the opposite wall. Her assailant is gone. Laura leans her forehead against the wall as the lights suddenly flicker back on and a few cheers sound from the bar. A cubicle door opens and a pretty paralytic girl stumbles out in confusion.

“Was - was someone fucking?”

Laura laughs. It was her birthday and she had almost got choked out in a toilet by an Irish giant.

“It’s my birthday.”

“Ooh, well hope it made your day,” the girl giggles with a wink and Laura smiles at her as she leaves. It’s a terrible cliché but in that moment she had never felt more alive. The Jacuzzi has the same effect but that now pales in comparison.

Hand tenderly against her throat she walks from the restroom and looks for her friends.

 

*

The blackout was good luck, the dark restroom and The Wife being in there alone. Everything was perfect. If he had just left her alone she might have just slipped and cracked her head open so intense was his luck on that day. But no he had to get his hands around an asphyxiation freak. In some fucked up thread of fate it had been both of their lucky days. She had got her kicks and he had gone another day without taking an innocent life.

Sweeney sighs, dragging his mind from that night. It had been over a year ago and he was still following her around. He had avoided going near her after that but he would sometimes catch her leaving her backdoor open and turn out all her lights and something in him had felt like a lodestone pulled to her.

He drives through the dark, hearing the tell-tell caw of Odin’s ravens above and stares at an approaching car. The Prisoner was days away from release and Odin's patience was growing thin. He demanded a sacrifice. The car comes closer and Sweeney sits up in recognition.

“Gobshite! Prick has his eyes closed,” he says, watching as the man’s car swerves a little in the lane. He is alone. Sweeney pushes his foot to the ignition, a grin stretching his mouth. He’ll scare the piss out of the unfaithful fitness freak and maybe, if luck is with him, end Gobshite’s night with his car in a ditch. His car speeds past and he has a flash of the man’s eyes opening in shock and jerking the wheel before he is clear. Neither car touches but Sweeney tenses as if struck as the car behind flips violently, the passenger side ripping off the car with a metallic screech. It comes apart like tin.

A woman tumbles out like a wheel, small body rolling along the road until she comes to a stop on her front. Mad Sweeney breaks suddenly, eyes fixed on the woman lying on the road. She appears unreal, some doll like creature. Not really in his body he steps from his car and walks up the road.

“…Laura?” he whispers, blinking in shock but before it can control him he swallows and balls his fists. She struggles to breathe and his eyes prickle.

A raven caws in the tree above and he finally rips his eyes away from her body. 

“Tell him, tell him it’s done.”

He looks back and she is dead.


End file.
